


focal point

by scifis



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:47:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27205429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scifis/pseuds/scifis
Summary: I wish I could give you happiness, Seungcheol thinks, in blue. Seungkwan answers, in a different language, green, mismatched, There is no one I would rather die beside. As always, even for brains that are connected, it’s impossible for things to not get lost in translation.
Relationships: Boo Seungkwan/Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	focal point

**Author's Note:**

> this is far from accurate and the lore is kind of all over the place. i will kindly ask for the benefit of the doubt in whatever you think doesn't make sense. also note that the unreliable narrator tag is there for a reason!
> 
> fun fact this started as me thinking "huh. the drift cannot Not have some imperfections, right?" and ended as me projecting... LOL. english isn't my first language, so i'm sorry for any mistakes, and i hope you enjoy! :^)

> Tell me how all this, and love too,
> 
> will ruin us. / These, our bodies,
> 
> possessed by light. / Tell me we'll
> 
> never get used to it.
> 
> — _Scheherazade_ , Richard Siken

Seungcheol moves mechanically. He’s been on autopilot for far too long, and his bones are made of the same material used in the Jaegers, now. It’s a love letter to the city, the way he seems to never sleep, either. A metaphor too cruel to comprehend, the way he misses the terrible-for-his-back bunk beds back at the training center. Maybe he’s head-over-heart two times too much. Maybe Seungcheol has lived many lives before this one and still feels the weight of all of them piled on his shoulders, bringing him down, sandbag heavy enough to make even Atlas break a sweat. Maybe Seungcheol wishes he could feel more than just regret all the time.

The work they give him after his dismissal is simple enough: take care of new cadets, be the face of all the heroes they see on TV, face of the Rangers, say _welcome to the Tokyo Shatterdome_ , and _be prepared, future pilots!_ with a smile that he knows has been called captivating by many. A few truths: Choi Seungcheol is not a hero. Choi Seungcheol misses his mother’s home cooked meals. Choi Seungcheol couldn’t, can’t, will never be able to save the world. Choi Seungcheol is a coward.

A few mechanics wave at him as he walks into the cafeteria, and he waves back. There’s a part of him that aches, begs to be one of them, wishes that he could go back and choose a simpler path all those years ago, when he was still training. It is all-consuming, the desire to be someone he is not. Someone different. Someone better. It is monopolizing in a way that has him scratching at his own bones, hollow, like those of a bird. Without wings, Seungcheol thinks he wouldn’t be able to go too far. He never could.

Is it really impossible to miss something you never even had to begin with?

The first Kaiju they kill together leaves the ocean a beautiful but toxic neon blue and Seungcheol’s heart filled with longing. If a creature so big could die in minutes, how much time would it take for the same to happen to him, he wonders? How welcoming is death? How painful? Seungkwan puts his right, suit-covered hand on his shoulder, Here is where we meet, and their eyes lock for a split second. Galaxies away from them, a star is dying, a comet is crashing into the surface of an inhabited planet, a different star is being born. In Seungkwan’s eyes there is hope, Here is where I have chosen you. Where we chose each other.

Adrenaline leaves his system in waves. First, the neon blue sea pulses and glows in sync with his heartbeat, and then the night sky seems to tone down its brightness through the glass panel in front of them. Seungkwan wills his hand away, gravitational pull ever so present, and there are many things they have learned about each other over the years but tiptoeing was always the biggest. The most existent. 

I wish I could give you happiness, Seungcheol thinks, in blue. Seungkwan answers, in a different language, green, mismatched, There is no one I would rather die beside. As always, even for brains that are connected, it’s impossible for things to not get lost in translation — Seungcheol has bigger problems to worry about. He puts away the meaning behind it all, locks it inside a big cage, makes sure to never let it escape and run free.

The ocean stops glowing and Seungkwan’s face grows dark, still etched to Seungcheol’s mind in a way that burns, leaves behind a trail of ashes even in midnight lighting; he knows the place of every mole, where his cheeks are hurting from the big way he smiles, knows the exact spot his own lips itch to plant a kiss on. Ardente Livre gets hauled up from the sea with the help of helicopters, and both of them lose balance for a fraction of a moment.

How eternal. How memorable. “We did good today,” Seungcheol says out loud to Seungkwan, to himself, to the people listening over the comms — there is a sound that follows, a hum in agreement, and he doesn’t know if it comes from inside his mind or not.

“Don’t we always?” Seugkwan asks. The challenge in his tongue is inviting, captivating, way too young. “Actually, you shouldn’t answer that.”

Seungcheol swallows down the words he never felt like saying. They flow silently through him, scarlet and hurtful: No, not always. He wonders if Seungkwan, too, can feel the bitter taste in his tongue.

Cadets come and go. Seungcheol barely has time to memorize their names, where they come from, how skilled they are — people, beginners, new Rangers come and go, and Seungcheol watches them leave. Accepts it. Doesn’t know what else there is for him to do. 

“Would you drop out with me?” Seungkwan had asked, young and bright-eyed, after a particularly long day spent working out together. The long answer, Seungcheol knew, was What else exists for us other than this? What would we do if not fight? What are we worth, if we don’t prove it to anyone.

Are we even worth anything at all.

The short answer, however, “We can’t.” And they couldn’t, really. Or maybe thinking that way was easier than explaining that the war was all they knew. All he, Seungcheol, knew. All he was made for. All he was worth. 

Time passes around them and the memories taste like acid in Seungcheol’s tongue. Words were always so hard, fighting was always so easy. Believing you are made for something sometimes feels like getting your feet stuck on quicksand—and then your knees, and hips, and waist. Never having anywhere to go.

Believing you are made for something: the sudden urge to know what it’s like to breathe underwater and then taking big breaths involuntarily, coming out empty of air. Seungcheol gasps for it, scratches his own throat, doesn’t know what lives on the other side.

“You should at least consider it.” Seungkwan had said, and waited, and then left. Like he did with everyone around him, Seungcheol had watched him go. To the empty shower room, he’d whispered “I don’t know anything else” a beat too late. His own heart stuttered in time with it, tired, always restrained by the heaviest chains. 

Humanity, Seungcheol knows, is a fragile thing.

Kids start at the Shatterdome big and loud and present, become Rangers with so little words in record time there is no way to know what their voices sound like, not from a distance. Part of piloting comes with the unspoken rule of turning pieces of yourself into a machine, too. Leaving childhood behind. 

His last year in Tokyo is almost unbearable — he’s alone, can only fake smile so much, relates to the new Rangers in the way he never speaks, either. Jihoon has half a brain to remind him to take care of himself, and Junhui, the other half, sometimes challenges him to have a bit of fun. They’re the best pilots Seungcheol knows. The only ones, too, at least on a personal level.

The Ranger program is shut down and the news gets to him first thing in the morning. A pastel blue colors the skies, mirrors almost perfectly the clear waters of an island Seungkwan had once wanted to see the most in the world. Without a Jaeger, without a partner, without a job that means something to him for the longest time, Seungcheol doesn’t find it in him to mourn it; the program is shut down because resources were always a limited thing, anyway, and the only thought that occurs to him is that he is free, even if he was never trapped in the first place.

Seungcheol knows Tokyo, and Tokyo knows him in return. Naturally, he gravitates, sticks close by—just in case. The remaining cadets are the first to leave the city, return to their homes all across the globe. The Shatterdome never reopens. News don’t talk nearly enough about it as he thinks they should. Humanity is a fragile thing, blink and it is gone, stripped, taken from you.

He stays, waits, doesn’t feel like he exists at all. The city lights at night mock him when, nowhere near him, a few people and their machines decide to save the world by themselves. Close the Breach. Stop the Kaiju.

So the war ends, and he doesn’t help with a single thing. He thinks of Seungkwan. Seungcheol wonders if worth has so much of a meaning to it, and if so, who gets to decide it.

Tokyo’s last Jaeger dies in the hands of a class four Kaiju, Ardente Livre doesn’t get replaced after her last battle, and Seungkwan’s lips taste like familiarity and farewell simultaneously — three things Seungcheol has to come to terms with in an incredibly short period of time. Ardente’s final day was a blur, flashes of color in a black and white stop motion world, both of her pilots lost long ago, gone, too far from the beginning point to notice how damaged she was. Like most people are, like most things get. Destructive. Destructible. Destroyed. 

Seungcheol can see himself clearly, hollow bones and overdriven system, in front of Seungkwan lifetimes after they lost themselves and each other. He can see Seungkwan’s eyes, always glinting, always looking back at him, can almost hear Seungkwan’s thoughts: This is something I never wanted to be a part of, I will be happy from now on, I don’t want to leave you. So much green. So much hope. I wish you had chosen me. I wish you could—

“Gonna cry, Ranger Choi?”

The only answer Seungcheol can give him is a hug. There was no need for Seungkwan to stay if their Jaeger was in pieces, if the Shatterdome wasn’t getting them a new one, if they had been cut from the Ranger program for what was decidedly going to be a long time. Seungkwan hugs back. Death of a star, comet crash, birth of another. It is always them coming back to this.

“Update me whenever you can,” Seungkwan never does. “I’m always proud of you.” I have chosen you in every breath of mine.

Weeks after their last drift, Seungcheol starts thinking as one person rather than two. Walks alone to the edge of every cliff, because Seugkwan never wanted to be a pilot, Seungkwan never wanted to fight a war, Seungkwan had a whole life full of infinities ahead of him. There are some things one has to relearn after being inside another’s mind for as long as they have; for Seungcheol, it is to experience seeing through a set of monochromatic eyes again — in real colors instead of made up, stark bright ones. Separate what is his and what isn’t, and live with that. In other realities there are metaphors he understands. 

“Do you ever feel alone?” Seungkwan had asked him, after a Drift simulation he doesn’t remember the results of. “I was just inside your head but I—” 

He wishes he could go back and say _Not when I’m with you_ , but he knows Seungkwan wouldn’t understand. Not even connected to him, not even in the Drift. Seungcheol’s emotions are his own, he knows. The first time he says out loud something he actually means is months later, in the Kwoon Room, staff in hands. “It’s actually fascinating how you can still smile when I got you pinned to the floor.”

Seungkwan bites. “You’ll never hurt me, Seungcheol.”

Not You won’t — you _cannot. There is no way for you to hurt me, Seungcheol_. Like cutting through fabric, Seungcheol and Seungkwan, in layers. Like hanging up pictures in an otherwise plain concrete wall, Seungcheol and Seungkwan, in contrast. Like purpose and meaning, Seungcheol, and Seugkwan, looking for it with the wrong set of eyes, or simply in a different way. Win the war. Save the world. Don’t cut out pieces of your own skin for someone else to burn.

“You’re a good man, Ranger Choi,” Seungkwan says in the middle of their goodbye speech. See you again speech. I will never tell you everything I want to tell you speech. “You’re a very good man.”

Seungcheol kisses him. Wishes he wasn’t.

“Do you think you’re the only one who knows how important this whole thing is, Cheol?” There is an intensity in Seugkwan’s eyes, in his voice, a certainty so big Seungcheol feels his own ears ring with it. He’s _loud_ , Seugkwan is—he’s so passionate and loud and he’s so human. “Everyone here is so focused on ending this fucking nightmare, Cheol, everyone—” Seungkwan sighs. Being human is exhausting, Seungcheol knows.

Their shared room at the Shatterdome has two twin beds, unmade, and pictures scattered on the walls. Proof of their existence. An impermanence Seungcheol is scared of. 

Seungkwan walks three steps to get to him, sits down. The sheets are colored an old white and Seungkwan’s eyes are the closest thing to what being alive feels like. “We’re going to lose, Cheol,” he whispers like it’s a secret, like Seungcheol doesn’t already know. “We’re already losing, fighting like this.”

“You’re the one who’s fighting, Kwan. I—” His voice breaks. Everything in me is fed by everything in you and when we collapse I hope we do it side by side. I hope my blood becomes your blood and my body meets yours in a final greeting. I want you to be the last thing I remember from this Earth when I leave.

Like Patroclus’s ghost to Achilles, to Seungkwan, Seungcheol: “May my bones not be buried apart from your bones. / May they lie together, just as we grew up together.”

Seungkwan says his name. The colors inside Seungcheol’s head swirl in time with the syllables that leave his mouth, with the timbre of his voice, with what Seungkwan is and he isn’t. “Cheol, look at me,” and he does.

Having a heartbeat sometimes feels like a punishment for a crime you never got to commit. The air around them shifts—Seungkwan’s eyes are an earthy brown, anchoring, safe. Without even thinking about it, their breathing is synchronized.

Seungkwan kisses him and it feels endless. He doesn’t have to think about it because he recognizes the whole thing, from the delicate hands cupping his cheeks to the warm sighs left against his lips. Anicca might kill him, but Seungkwan feels eternal. Makes Seungcheol feel eternal.

“Do you want this?” Seungkwan asks in between kisses, hands firm at their place in Seungcheol’s stomach, laying him down on the bed, always the helper. Seungcheol has never wanted anything more. Anything else. Anything.

“Please,” Seugcheol answers, and it’s enough. They’ve had too much of each other over the years. Need more. Seungcheol, lacking object permanence, aches to feel all the places in which he is real and can burn; Seungkwan, eidetic memory, didactic by nature, maps those out and teaches him.

Love is a brain-made, chemical-driven concept — Seungcheol has been inside a lot of minds, shared a lot of experiences, and he knows this. Seungkwan picks him apart like a mechanic does a machine, gives him what he asks for and doesn’t. Colors that haven’t been named yet exist in the way Seungcheol can’t feel where he ends and Seungkwan begins. Comet crash, death of a star; their bodies have been compatible, connatural, raw and real, long before their minds were given the same job.

“I only have you,” Seungkwan says, countless heartbeats later. Seungcheol still breathes in time with him, has half a mind to pay attention to the rise and fall of Seungkwan’s chest next to his own. “I don’t want this life anymore, Cheol.”

Seungcheol gets up, puts his clothes on. Sighs. Seugkwan will keep talking, and he will listen. It is always them coming back to this.

“I can barely recognize you, you know?” I can barely recognize myself. “Whenever we drift you run away from me. I want us out of here, Cheol. Before I lose you, too. God knows I already am.” 

From where he stands, Seungcheol can see the tears brimming in his eyes. About being temporary: you can choose to make yourself happy, or you can look the other way. Don't even bother. Make someone else. Seungcheol stares at the gray ceiling of their shared room at the Shatterdome.

“I only have you,” Seungkwan repeats, but—I am nothing. I know nothing. I am empty and hollow and I will be the same forever, Seungcheol looks back at him, says “Then you have no one, Seungkwan.” Closes the door on his way out.

At the Shatterdome, everyone looks at him with adoration and Seungcheol feels every single one of his bones get filled to the brim with it, too. His uniform says Ranger Choi, Seungkwan’s carries Ranger Boo in it; they’re a team. They’re pilot and co-pilot. They have a Jaeger and she’s so beautiful it leaves him speechless. For the first time in his whole life, Seungcheol sees possibilities ahead of him.

The halls get quiet during the night, and that’s how he prefers them to be. His nature feels insignificant compared to the magnitude of the concrete walls surrounding him — it’s not an unpleasant feeling, this time. Everyone has been paying attention to him for too long. Concrete walls can’t see, and they can’t talk, and they can’t tell him he’s done a good job or scold him for having made a mistake during training. In a way, they’re good company.

Seungkwan finds him looking up at Ardente Livre an hour or two later. He hadn’t known he was lost. The Jaeger looks terrifying against the hangar lights, more than three hundred feet above them. “She’s ours,” Seungkwan says against his ear, We’re hers. I’m yours. “She’s all ours, can you believe that?” That we earned this? That all the work we’ve done so far has been recognized? That we’re together in this?

A silly smile finds itself at home on Seungcheol’s lips. He takes his eyes off of Ardente, looks behind him, catches every single star in Seungkwan’s. “It’s been hell,” he says, I’m glad you were by my side the whole time. I couldn’t have done this without you. You see things in me I could never see in myself. We’re together in this.

“It’ll probably get worse, Cheol,” Seungkwan says, and it is something they don’t find it in them to care about just yet. Seungkwan smiles back at him, and Ardente Livre stands tall in front of them in all of her dark red glory, and the concrete walls are good at keeping secrets — when Seungkwan leaves, Seungcheol confides in them just how scared he is of the world. Of change. Of failure.

Life was always the same until it wasn’t. Monsters came out of the sea. Belonging somewhere had a meaning, and then a different one. Quiet places only start to feel scary once you get used to being surrounded by noise, and that is a great lesson on how the possibility of loss can make you the strongest person in the world.

Seungkwan sings every morning. Hums the words to pop songs Seungcheol has no idea the name of, and there is immense beauty in the way his voice never leaves the back of Seungcheol’s mind even when they sit together in silence. A perfect reconstruction, down to every note he’s heard over the years. The architects, programmers, engineers in the dome, Seungcheol is sure, can only dream of building something as permanent as the Seungkwan-shaped impression always fresh on his brain. 

Whenever he blinks the world spins a little more. Seungcheol focuses on the images running around in his mind, but they are useless. They aren’t real, not as real as he needs them to be. He can’t feel the weight of his own bones because they don’t exist and he isn’t there, not really, not fully. 

Every time they step out of Ardente a part of him stays behind; in the sea, or inside the Jaeger, or buried with the monster they kill and doesn’t have a name he’s brave enough to remember. Memories of Seungkwan get loud when he’s close. Everything else becomes dull and lifeless, devoid of color. 

_Seungcheol!_ , his own mind screams at him. “Seungcheol,” he hears from the other end of the corridor. Oh, he thinks, so this is how it feels. This is how it feels. He looks up, breathes in, screams Seungkwan, Seungkwan, Seungkwan, then falls to his knees. 

The drivesuit they’re both still wearing makes the steps Seungkwan is taking slower than they are supposed to be. Seungcheol counts them; One, two, three. Four. You are here. I am here. Here is where we meet. Seungkwan doesn’t hold him like he wishes he was held — it grounds him enough to keep breathing, though, so Seungcheol knows this is what he needs. 

“—to be alone.” Seungkwan says with finality. “Let’s get ourselves some real clothes, and then I’ll—” His eyes meet Seungcheol’s, then soften. “We’ll take care of each other.” 

They nod at the same time, and their suits get taken off at the same time, and there’s no way for him to know but Seungcheol bets they mirror each other’s movements perfectly from an outsider point of view. He tries as hard as he can to put his left foot in front of his right on the way back to their room, can only do so because Seungkwan walks ahead of him, shows him how. 

As soon as his back hits the hard mattress, tears escape his eyes. Seungkwan is looking down at him a mixture of understanding and fondness, and Seungcheol lets it wash over him like the rain, like the deep blue seas, like the skies that surround them and he can only see through glass panels. 

“Talk to me,” Seungkwan says, sits aligned with Seungcheol’s waist on the bed, lets the pads of his fingers travel their way across his face. “I need you to speak, Cheol.” 

I want you to be happy, I want you to be happy, I want— “There’s no end to this.” Will there ever be an end to this? Will you ever be happy? 

Like the moon exists on the night sky only to be replaced by the sun once the day comes, Seungkwan holds his hands, paints green where Seungcheol is tainted blue, equation and X, light and darkness. Another part of him gets lost. There is no end to this. Will there ever be an end to this? 

“We won, Cheol,” we won today. You won today. You will win tomorrow. “You’re still here. That means something.” It means something to me. You mean something to me. 

The walls around them are so bare it hurts to look at them, impersonality is such a terrifying thing. His body shakes with the force of his sobs, but they get quieter the more time he spends inside a mind that isn’t his own. We should— 

“Let’s go to bed,” Seungkwan says. “I’m tired and I want you to cuddle me. We’re going to bed.” 

Seungcheol’s eyes sting. Through his tears, in a weird post-Drift haze, he can’t see where the real world begins. He’s stuck on many places at once: the Academy in Kodiak, visiting the Hama Rikyu gardens for the first time, back inside the Jaeger they’ve fought so hard to call theirs. 

“What about tomorrow?” he whispers and doesn’t know if he wants Seungkwan to hear him. Maybe he does. The walls are bare and nothing means anything anymore and tomorrow— “Will we be here tomorrow?” 

Will you be happy. Will you ever be happy. 

“Tomorrow we’ll hang Polaroid pictures in our walls,” and oh. Tomorrow we will. Seungkwan slots himself in the space between Seungcheol’s shoulders, rests his head against a heartbeat that reflects his own. “There’s you, me, Jeonghan and Joshua from the Academy. We were so little, back then.” 

We were. Seungkwan stops talking, sings instead.

After the war, people have become more lighthearted than Seungcheol ever remembered them to be. Jeju Island especially, he thinks. Not that he would know. The only islands he’s ever been to were simultaneously the saddest and happiest places in the world for him.

The last phone call he’s made makes it harder to breathe than it should. It lodges itself in his brain, the elusive conversation, the illusive comfort. Seungkwan’s voice and how it has changed, sounds nothing like him and even less over the phone. 

“Kwan. Have you heard?” And of course he had. He knew what Seungcheol was thinking, too. He shouldn’t. Jeju wasn’t big enough for the two of them and, “Jesus, Seungkwan. What are we? Tragedy?” Yes, Seungcheol. Strong interaction. A fucking catastrophe waiting to happen.

The streets are confusing and he has only memories of what Seungkwan told him ages ago as guides. Around him there is green, and light, and he’s forgotten how the sun feels on direct contact with his skin but now he lives it and it burns. Everything, from the air to the sounds, leaves an imprint on his brain — no matter how Seungcheol looks at them, they all fit into what Seungkwan is. Or used to be.

They both grew up away from where they were supposed to. Back at the Academy, Seungkwan used to call his mom and ask her to tell him stories about a childhood he never got to live for himself, and Seungcheol remembers them all. Daegu was so different, they were so different, (This is where we are concentered, and this is where we vary, and this is how it makes us the same).

Seungcheol uses every last bit of focus in him to create a full image from the pieces he’s seen over the years in someone else’s memories. I wanna go there, Seungkwan used to say. I want to see it for myself again and remember it fully.

He wanders alone, in quick strides. Landscapes around him overlap with the ones Seungkwan has left behind, blurred around the edges. When he gets to where he’s supposed to, the sun is setting and the beach is almost empty. The only person he wishes he’d given everything up for sits barefoot in the sand, and Seungcheol still finds him beautiful even after lifetimes.

He sees the lines adorning Seungkwan’s face and for once they’re from laughter. Seungkwan has been living a happy life without him — he can recognize and admit this much. It’s a good thing. A wonderful thing. Something in Seungcheol’s chest presses steadily against his ribcage, rhythm a melody well-known but rusty, unused over the time they spent apart. He feels lighter, now.

Seungcheol knows him, has known him, will continue to know him. Seungkwan is just someone he’ll forever have a connection with. Even if they don’t know where they stand just yet. Even if they never have.

Looking at him, (seing the man looking back,) he doesn’t even need to extend his hand to know that Seungkwan would take it without a second thought. Past the physical world, they’ve existed, they exist together in a shared in-between, fabricated and uncertain, almost tangible. Almost. 

Outside of the Jaegers, without the help of the strings that once tied them together, Seungcheol knows — this is where, this is how things hurt the most: when they are said out loud.

“You came even after I told you not to,” Seungkwan lets out after a long sigh; the Seungcheol effect. The white sand surrounding them makes for a beautiful contrast with the sudden heaviness in the air. Clear water meets shore meets two hearts that have overgrown the expanse of the chests they are located in, says Welcome home, welcome home, welcome home. 

In every life he’s lived, in every universe he’s found himself in over the years, in every ending imaginable but unlike every other finite thing, Seungcheol’s beginning was never in time, but in Seungkwan—and vice versa. First Antinomy, of Space and Time: set theory, critique of pure reason, limited. 

This is a metaphor he understands because he made it himself. Chose to live it all his life. “I was always the worst at doing what you asked of me. Apparently still am.” I can see you. I can see through you. Here is where we meet. Here is where I have chosen you. 

Again, again, again. Like the sea, Seungkwan opens up to him, “Hi, Seungcheol,” I have been waiting for you for a long time. Welcome home.

The Kwoon Room is full; Seungcheol is surrounded by the people he’s shared the early years of his youth with and at least one of them will be compatible enough. At least one of them will make him feel like he’s enough, too. 

It isn’t his turn yet. Not yet. No one calls his name, and he doesn’t register the oxygen finding his lungs every time he takes a breath. Not yet. There are a few cadets he knows by name — Jeonghan, Josh, Soonyoung. He knows the probability of being compatible with one of them is low. Jeonghan and Josh are extensions of each other. Soonyoung is still too hard around the edges, too childish, not polished enough to leave Kodiak just yet. 

“Lee Chan,” he hears. The boy standing at the center of the room holds a staff and looks directly at the kid who was called, Lee Chan, before offering him one as well. 

Seungcheol starts paying attention when they start, it’s inevitable. Every pair of eyes in the room is trained to them and the sound of their staffs knocking against each other rings loudly on Seungcheol’s ears. 

Lee Chan is good, but can’t predict the other boy’s attacks. They are dancing a weird, uncoordinated dance and the boy without a name— Seungcheol thinks he’s phenomenal, even then. Like he knows what he’s doing. Like he’s confident this is the way battles are supposed to go. Like the fluidity of his movements is second nature, inevitable. 

The match ends four‐two. The boy without a name is called Boo Seungkwan. Seungcheol steps into the mat, says “I’d like to go next,” grabs his own staff, Here is where we meet. Here is where I have chosen you. Seungkwan looks at him and seems to understand — that, to Seungcheol, is enough.

He is home.

**Author's Note:**

> if you got to this point i rly hope you enjoyed the ride, from the bottom of my heart. also i love u. comments and kudos are always appreciated !! :D


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